Educational Free Software

Before addressing the subject in this section, we would like to
remind our readers that the word "Free" in "Free Software" does
not refer to price but to liberty. Free
Software is software that grants you freedom, namely
the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the
software. To learn more, see the
Free Software definition.

What you will find in this section

These pages do not constitute an exhaustive listing of available
educational free programs. Our aim is to present some examples so as to
illustrate how educational institutions can put into practice and
effectively apply the freedoms that Free Software grants them. For each
program described, we will show how those freedoms were actually
applied.

Some of the programs presented here, like GCompris, are part of the
GNU Project. This means that developers of these programs agree to pay
attention to making the program work well with the rest of the
GNU System. A GNU program uses the latest version of the license that
the GNU Project recommends in order to protect the users' fundamental
freedoms. A GNU program does not recommend the use of any nonfree
program, and it does not refer the user to any nonfree documentation
for Free Software, as defined in our campaign for
free documentation.

People who wish to migrate to Free Software or are looking for a free
libre program to accomplish a particular task, should refer to the
Free Software Directory, which
consists of a catalog of more than 6,000 free programs that run on
free operating
systems. In particular, the
Education section
of the Directory lists programs inherent to different levels of
education, from pre-elementary school to highly specialized levels,
including university and research.

We are looking for free educational games, or information about free games
that can be used for educational purposes. Contact
<education@gnu.org>.

If you know of a Free Software program that is being used by an
educational institution for specific purposes, or has been modified or
otherwise adapted by its users to meet their own educational needs,
please let us know by sending an email to
<education@gnu.org>.